Are People Paying Attention To What You Share?

I included an article in my weekly ‘Top 10 Reads’ email (message me if you’d like to be put on the distribution list) that discussed the duration a link ‘survives our attention’ on the social graph. On average – about 3 hours. That number, oddly enough, does not surprise me. Day in and day out we are faced with a deluge of information from our peers, co-workers, and virtual friends and followers. How much can we possibly retain, before moving onto the next compelling link for fear of missing something important? Again, about 3 hours.

While not unexpected to me, that number did give me pause. Are we in the constant quest to gain more information, at the risk of not retaining significant things that might actually matter or help us do our job? Perhaps. I know I’m guilty of this from time to time. There is a certain urge to be ‘first’ or to ‘break news’ – as a result, I’m not sure people actually live beyond the 140 characters they put in the line of their tweet or the short description they put in their Facebook or Linkedin share. For me, it’s important that I read (and have an opinion on) the content that I am sharing to my social network – otherwise what is the point in sharing? If you’d like to read the full report, please check it out on bit.ly.